


According to Plan

by quicksparrows



Series: Side by Side – Chrobin [23]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 09:46:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9602339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: After wounding Chrom for the sake of a gambit, Ada keeps vigil at his bedside.





	

**Author's Note:**

> More from the backlog.

.

 

 

According to plan, Chrom had been pretty seriously wounded.

Ada is exhausted to the point of sleeping sitting up at his bedside, her elbows on the cot and one hand curled around his, her head lolling forward. They're moving –– they have to keep moving –– and she jostles awake every time the wagon goes over a bump in the dirt roads. He doesn't even stir. He's fast asleep.

He shouldn't be in this cart at all, but this is her fault.

He'd gotten up quick enough after she'd forked him with lightning; he could run, even, for a little bit. He'd even had the strength to tackle their daughter to the ground to avoid a strike, and at the time, Ada had thought maybe it was okay. Maybe she hadn't gone in as hard as it had felt. Maybe it had been shock more than anything. 

But no, it had caught up with him as soon as the adrenaline had worn off. He hadn't done so well after that. Even considering the joint efforts of Lissa and Maribelle to revive him, Ada's sure he'll take a days to get his strength back.

It'll be a bitter journey. They still need to get to the Dragon's Table, and after a long trek through the desert, it'll be days at sea. It will be necessary, too, to keep Chrom out of sight, in case Validar's spies are still poking around. For her part, she's tried to keep out of sight, too, but mostly from others in their camp –– Frederick is _furious_. Lucina isn't speaking to her. Morgan is beside himself with tears. 

And why shouldn't they be? She'd very nearly killed him, and deliberately at that.

He curls his fingers around hers suddenly, rousing her from dozing off.

"Chrom," she says.

"Hey," he says. He rubs the sleep from his eyes with his free hand, and then he looks at her with concern. "Why don't you go to bed? I'm alright here, I'm just going to sleep."

"I'd rather wait with you," she says.

"You know, what happened back there isn't your fault. I don't want you to feel bad about it."

She does anyway, but Chrom, _sweet_ Chrom, he approaches the whole situation like she's the one hurt. Maybe it's relief to be alive, but his concern is so genuinely sweet.

"I'm feeling like a pretty lousy wife," she admits. She hasn't slept much in two days, and she gives him a bleary look that matches just how exhausted she feels.

She feels even more exhausted when her gaze falls to the wound. Ada doesn't even like to look at it. It's too ugly, especially knowing she'd done it, but he's laid out in bed stripped to the waist, nothing but a sheet to cover his chest. He cringes deeply every time he moves -- lightning magic to the chest will do that to a man.

Chrom stews on what to say, but he's still giving her those big concerned eyes. 

"Everything that happened back there was between a tactician and captain," Chrom reassures her. "It's okay, Ada. It's really okay."

Ada busies herself reaching for a cloth floating in the nearby washbasin, and she wrings it out to bring it warm and soapy to his face, to wipe his brow.

"You're sure? Not a single iota of you is concerned that your wife stole from you, lied to you, and very nearly killed you as a part of a gambit?"

"You never lied to me," Chrom replies, firmly. "Leaving me in the dark was for the good of the mission... and really, I knew you'd do what was best."

He'd known, but had it been obvious to him when she'd crumbled to Grima's influence? Chrom is too volatile, too easily ensnared by his emotions. Validar knew Chrom would die fighting to preserve Ylisse's hold on the sacred shield. It took Chrom's near-death for it to be believable, as well as to preserve Validar's perception of the future.

Grima's perception of the future.

And she'd accepted the risk, knowing that in all likeliness Validar would have sussed out Chrom as deliberately giving up the Fire Emblem, but she hadn't expected to nearly be swept away in it.

Ada runs the cloth down his neck in gentle circles. Chrom reaches for her, bracingly running a hand along her side. It's soothing, or at least it tries to be, but his reach is limited.

"Ada," Chrom says, in lieu of her silence. "Everything went perfectly. It was an _incredible_ ploy. We carried the day."

"I don't need to be reassured of that part," Ada reminds him. "I just need to know you're truly okay with this."

It's Chrom's turn to pause, and he reaches for her wrist to still her hand.

"Ada," he says, seriously. "I'm fine with it. Please stop expecting me to be mad at you, that's really not how I feel at all."

She wishes she could be satisfied with that.

"Love," she says. "I could have killed you."

"But you didn't," Chrom says, pointedly.

It hasn't even been a day since she drove a fistful of lightning into his chest, energy burning flesh and sinew, his heart shuddering with the trauma. He'd used his dying words to convince her it wasn't her fault, that she would go on with life free of guilt.

Truth be told, in that moment, she had thought she'd killed him after all. All of her mental preparation for that moment, all her determination to maintain control of herself and wound Chrom on her own, that had felt exceedingly fragile when Grima's influence had taken over. For a second, heart thudding and Chrom asking what was wrong, she'd lost control, and had thought it was all over.

Her fear had been real in that moment. Very real, right until she'd managed -- oh, Naga, thank Naga she'd managed -- to wrest it back, just in time to withdraw, to bleed power everywhere except his body.

She'd nearly killed him for real. Gods, how would she have felt then, if her plan to injure him grievously had been wrested from her control absolutely and she'd killed him? 

It's hard to take pride in a plan that very nearly failed, especially when the odds of failure were so high in the first place. 

It's hard to trust that she did the right thing when it very nearly went so wrong.

Worse, she thinks, Grima's power over her will be absolute someday, if they don't destroy him. She could very well kill her husband anyway. Maybe a few days from now. A week. A year. If there's anything left of their world by then, anyhow.

 _You'll need to someday,_ Grima says, somewhere deep within her. _You'll give up on the folly of human relationships soon._

Ada's chest feels tight.

Suddenly, Chrom is clutching her arms tightly, and he's repeating to her:

"Ada? Ada? Come back to me, Ada."

All over again.

She shakes it off. She focuses. She sighs and hangs her head and shudders a little, and she returns the cloth to the bowl and looks at him with a heavy breath.

"Doesn't it worry you," she asks, "that I am losing control of myself to Grima?

"Ada," Chrom says her name for the millionth time, soft but concerned. "Of course I'm worried... but you're here with me, aren't you? You're far from losing control. You're fine."

She doesn't feel fine.

"I just need you to _make sure_ I'm sane," she says. "I just need you to be brutally honest about my actions, to make sure that I'm not losing it and don't realize it. I need you to criticize me, okay? I need you to..."

She trails off. Chrom looks up at her, utterly concerned. Her mental state has never felt so sure, and yet so damned precarious.

"I need you to not excuse what I did to you," she says. 

Chrom sighs.

"I love you," he says. "Unconditionally. I'm not excusing it, I just know that I love you so much that it seems kind of insignificant."

Ada's breath hitches in a muffled little sob, and Chrom looks up at her with a sad look in his eyes, but he's smiling, too.

"Look, I know it feels like the worst betrayal to you, and I don't want to tell you not to care," Chrom continues. "But I forgive you. I forgave you right when you did it. And see? Both of us are here together still. We're fine."

"I planned it," Ada says. "I planned it, and even if Grima played a part and I almost lost control, I did plan to hurt you. I had to."

He doesn't even flinch, doesn't even flicker. If anything, he softens more, and it swells her heart as much as it terrifies her. He could have died. He very nearly died at her hand, and still, he lays himself out to her, soft-bellied and sensitive. Ada could cry, the way he looks at her.

"Right now," he says, "you just keep doing what you need to. If that is what the plan needed, then so be it, I don't care. I'll tell you if you're acting strange, but I'm not going to doubt your intentions, or let you think I'm doubting you, or any of that. You're still in control, and you need to fight to keep it that way, and you can't fight this when you're worried about me being bitter, alright?"

She feels so boneless, sagging in his grip, leaning over him like a felled tree. Chrom pulls her to him, so she might lay against his side, and he forks his fingers though her hair and leans his cheek against the crown of her head and he tells her, in no uncertain terms:

"I love you no matter what."

"I-I love you too," she manages, weeping against his neck.

"And we have three beautiful children," he tells her, "who also love us no matter what."

She nods under his hand.

"And I wish I could hold you properly right now," Chrom adds, and he gently teases: "But I have a hole in my chest and it hurts like hell."

Ada lets out a choked noise, despite her tears.

"I guess that's my punishment," she says. "I don't get a hug!"

"Not today, anyway," Chrom says. "Maybe tomorrow, or if I can tease another elixir out of Lissa."

"Elixirs are for emergencies," Ada says. "You, my dear, are stable."

She leans out of his arms, just enough to kiss him on the temple, and he hums his affections as he does it. 

"Lord Chrom!" Maribelle shouts from the medical tent door, and Ada sits up abruptly. "I leave you alone for fifteen minutes against my better judgement, and you choose to seduce your wife in MY medical tent! Sir, you are _injured_ –– release the poor woman!"

"Why is it only me in trouble?" Chrom protests.

"Well, Ada has to answer for this, too," Maribelle says. "You're supposed to be bathing-- oh, dear! What are all those tears for?"

Her bluntness almost pries a laugh out of Ada, a single little "ha" and a tight smile.

"I stabbed my husband in the chest," Ada says.

Maribelle gives her a sympathetic look, and she bustles over with a dinner tray for Chrom.

"That would do it, wouldn't it? I think this is the saddest I've ever seen you, but you're still smiling, aren't you?" Maribelle says. "But this one––" She pauses, setting down the tray and reaching to pinch Chrom's cheek, maybe a little harder than necessary. "This one is incorrigible, ever since we were children. He would walk on a broken ankle just to avoid the boredom of being bedridden."

"It wasn't broken," Chrom replies, looking to Ada. "I just turned it."

"He was in a cast for weeks," Maribelle tells Ada, pointedly.

"That sounds like him," Ada says, perhaps with a little more humor. "It really does."

"You know the kinds of precautions Frederick takes," Chrom insists. "It wasn't broken."

Maribelle waves him off.

"It was broken," she tells Ada, again, and then she puts her hands on her hips and sighs. "Now, can I trust you to resist this dog's advances long enough to clean him up? And feed him? I can do it if you're not feeling up to it."

"I'm fine, I'll do it," Ada says, extracting her hand from Chrom's grip in order to wipe her eyes. 

"Good," Maribelle says, and she leans in to look at Chrom's chest, making rather dissatisfied faces. "And you behave! The more you move around and aggravate it, the longer it will take to heal, and if you'd ever like to see the battlefield again at your full vigor, you'll heed that, sir."

"Duly noted, Maribelle," Chrom says. 

Maribelle finishes up her inspections, poking at him once or twice, and despite her usual briskness, she does pause to stroke his hair out of his face affectionately.

"You be nice to your wife," Maribelle says. 

"Also noted," he says.

Maribelle bustles out, leaving Ada still sniffling as she wrings out the washcloth, Chrom watching her with a little smugness glittering in his eyes.

"Your punishment is actually that you have to bathe me and feed me," he says. "I let you hit me so I could milk it for the attention."

"So now I've been neglecting you, too," she retorts, just a little wry. "I guess I really am a bad wife."

Chrom laughs.

So does she.

 


End file.
